Fran Wilde - Updraft

Nat coughed, each jerk causing him to stiffen in pain. I tipped more water to his lips. The sack felt very light. Not much water left to us. He sipped.

“Take more.”

He handed it back. “You feel guilty. Don’t. You made your choice to be a Singer. Live with that. Change your course if you feel you should, but don’t feel guilty.”

I bristled. “I wouldn’t have flown the Gyre if you hadn’t challenged, Nat. I wasn’t near ready. So if I am a Singer now…” I paused. Was I still a Singer? Someone who killed people? With skymouths? And did I still want to be? “If I am a Singer, you helped make me one.”

Turning away from our argument, Tobiat grabbed the bladder and an empty satchel and crawled back through the tunnel, yelling, “Singer. Sing. Singing.” He left me alone with Nat, who began to doze again while I thought about the Gyre fight, the Singers. The skymouths.

* * *

Nat yelled himself awake from a nightmare that had him grasping the air with his hands.

“Shh.” I held his hand, and he didn’t pull away. “You have more lives than a nest of silk spiders.”

He grinned. A real Nat smile, from before everything. “Can’t give up. Worse than falling.”

“I didn’t give up.” I realized it was true. I had found a way to keep going. That was part of who I was. And part of who Nat was, also. We fought hard to live.

As the space around us grew pale with early light, I realized we had a bigger fight ahead of us. If Rumul knew we were alive, he would do everything to change that. We knew too much. I knew too much.

The truth was a gift I could give Nat.

“Nat,” I whispered, as he tried to find a more comfortable spot, “Singers fly at night. Nightwings are real.” I was nearly bursting to tell him how it worked. The old Nat would have loved to know. Would have been desperate to heal fast in order to try it himself.

He only looked tired. “One of too many secrets kept by the Spire.” He shifted position, trying to escape the pain. “Like what happened to Naton.”

It had been decided. The challenger was defeated. We keep the silence.

Still, the words rushed from me. “I know what happened.”

I’d betrayed Nat in the Gyre. But my father had betrayed his father, so many years ago. How many layers of betrayal did it take to work the cracks in a friendship — especially one like ours — and break it apart?

I took a deep breath. “Your dad discovered that the Singers could fly at night. He was going to trade the information. To Ezarit.”

“Ezarit? Why?”

Now I couldn’t bring myself to answer him. The words stuck in my throat. Because she wanted power and standing. She wanted it even before my father disappeared. She wanted to be the best and the fastest trader. No matter whose life she risked.

It was too close to a confession. Like mother, like daughter.

“Someone found out Naton was trading Singer secrets?”

It would have been so easy to echo his word— someone —and leave it at that. But I couldn’t keep things from him anymore.

“My father. He was in love with Ezarit, but he was Spire-born. He was trying to protect the city. He didn’t know—” I stopped. Civik knew.

Nat hitched himself up so that his back was propped against the wall. He looked for the water sack, but Tobiat had taken it with him.

His lips were so dry. I wished Tobiat would hurry back.

“And that’s why the Singers threw Naton down? Because he stole their secret?”

I pushed a strand of hair back behind my ear. “Yes.”

Around us, Lith creaked. The floor rumbled.

Nat shook his head. “That might be half of it.”

I stared at him, not understanding. “My father told me himself.”

Nat rolled over, groaning. I tried to help him, but he pushed me away. “Let me do this.”

With his finger, Nat traced from memory a pattern in the dust. After staring at it for a moment, I realized I knew a part of that pattern well. Even upside down. The skymouth pens. But the rest of it baffled me. Nat misunderstood my confusion.

“It’s one of the carvings from the back of Naton’s bone chips. Though it doesn’t look like instructions for night flying. It looks architectural.”

So even now, I’d not been told the whole truth. I sat back and studied the drawing. “What do you think these are?” I waved my hand over a tiny mark on the pattern, then another similar one.

“Elna called them Spire holes.”

I thought about that. The holes marked tier after tier. There were even more near the thick pattern that I’d recognized. But the holes marked tiers where there were no pulleys or pens. “Why would Naton drill so many holes?”

Nat shook his head.

“Where are the chips now?” If we could study them together, we could connect the secrets. Figure out Naton’s message.

He wiped the dust flat. “We traded them to the windbeaters. They didn’t want them at first, but Elna knew what to say. That they were from Naton.”

I could only imagine what kind of sabotage the windbeaters could get up to with that map. The ways they could foil Rumul, or those like him. The thought gave me pause. We were trapped in Lith, but Naton’s chips could still cause havoc.

But another question still bothered me. “How did you know about the vents?”

Tobiat crawled back through the wall and interrupted. “Me!” he hooted.

“Elna said she went looking for Naton after he disappeared, after he was thrown down. She flew as far downtower as she could, around the city. She didn’t find him.”

“Found me!” Tobiat spread his arms wide. “Shiny present for the artifex’s wife.”

Nat looked at me, dirty and wounded, and rolled his eyes. Squeezed my hand quickly. I squeezed back before he let go. Almost like old times.

“How long have you been here?”

“Days,” he whispered. “Shot through that vent in the Spire, got banged around, and fell again. Landed hard. Then someone found me. Brought me here.”

“Who?” I asked. This was important. Tobiat had said, Wind was right.

“I never saw. But then your Singer brought Tobiat to take care of me.” Nat laughed until he coughed, and his eyes closed again. He passed into a restless sleep, exhausted by our conversation.

Wik. I heard the dark Singer’s voice in my memory: I wouldn’t have let them harm Elna. Felt him catching me while Sellis flew on. So many secrets in the Spire. So many currents working round each other.

I crawled past Tobiat, back through the tunnel, and onto the empty, black balcony. I leaned against a crumbling wall and looked up at the city that had risen beyond Lith’s broken tiers.

A shadow passed the balcony. One shadow, but two people: Wik, carrying Elna.

When Wik set her on the ledge, Elna stood for a moment before her legs wobbled. She caught herself against a spur, then sank to the ground and began to crawl towards the tunnel. Towards the sound of Tobiat’s voice. She’d been here before. But to fly like that, without wings, blind, after a near attack. She was stronger than I’d ever imagined she could be.

Wik stood on the thin balcony, furling his wings and looking to the horizon. I resisted the urge to push him off.

Elna disappeared into the tunnel, and I followed. She hadn’t realized I was there yet. I watched her tend Nat, listened to her clucking at him. She touched Nat’s wounds gently and reached into her satchel for a packet of herbs. Pulled back the gray silk, but kept it to reuse. “Who has been here?” she asked.

“Singer,” said Tobiat.

Elna dipped her head. “On your wings, Wik.”

Wik, who had followed us to the tunnel’s mouth, said, “Not me. Kirit.”